Frederick, population nine, lingers as Rice County ponders town's future

Frederick, Kansas, population nine or 10, on a good day. 

I got an email in early June from a resident in the small town I live in. She said her aunt, Wanda Plautz would be excellent to talk to about the history of Frederick, Kansas.

But my research lead me to a deeper story. The town has been incorporated since the late 1800s. Now the third-class city of just nine residents must decide if it will live or die.

No one ran for election in April. Moreover, no one voted or wrote in a name. There is no official mayor or council.

Here's an excerpt from my story:

Frederick is on life support. 

Melode Huggans knows this. She's seen the signs since she was a little girl, visiting her grandparents, who lived on the same parcel she does today.

The school at Frederick

The schoolhouse is empty − stripped of its desks. A jail cell sits in the middle of a field of wheat stubble, the metal bars and innards rusting. Old playground equipment and paint-worn cars are barely visible amid the trees after decades of neglect. 

Now loved ones like Huggans are faced with a difficult decision on whether it is time for this town to face a natural death.

Ten people call Frederick home − on a good day, that is. It once had as many as 150 people, along with grocery stores, a lumberyard, blacksmiths and restaurants. 

Yet, on this July morning, Huggans pointed up an empty street in front of the home she and husband, Steve, have lived in for 19 years. This was the main thoroughfare, she said. But every business has vanished. There isn't even a foundation left. 

Frederick, an official Kansas third-class city, is almost a ghost town. 

In the April election, no one ran for mayor or for any of the city council seats. Not one resident wrote in a name, either. In fact, it appears no one even voted.

The old jail still stands

For the first time since the town's inception in 1887, Frederick has no leaders. The town's budget is due Aug. 25.

At a recent Rice County Commission meeting, commissioners and the county clerk discussed if it is time the town calls it quits and unincorporates. 

Huggans doesn't know the answer. She serves as the Frederick city clerk, but isn't sure the next time the former council will meet. Her husband is on the city council. But their thoughts have been on other things. Melode has been battling breast cancer, diagnosed in April.

Frederick, however, is a part of her life. 

"My grandparents lived here," she said. "It was a town when they lived here. My mom was born here, went to school here."

To read the rest of the story and see more photos and a video, visit www.KansasAgland.com. 

Ghost Houses of the Prairies by Dave McKane

Irish Photographer Dave McKane was exposed to the Kansas plains as an exchange student at Hutchinson High School in 1978. His love of the area continues as he works to document the "ghost houses" of the prairie. Dave is featured in my story on Pollard, Kansas. He is work is awesome - he is very talented! I love it that he has a passion for rural Kansas and visits here a few times every year.

And I love the photo he took of the house just outside the dead town of Pollard in Rice County. Here is a photo from his website.
http://www.davemckanearts.com/folios/folio1.html

Ghost houses of the prairies    

Eventually

clouds roll in

filling big, blue skies

full of darkness and lightning

worrying the lifeless farmhouses beneath

like icebergs rushing headlong

towards the Titanic

1941, 1961, 1981

how long since

beds were made

stoves fired up

living room floors kissed

by straw brooms?

Now

screens that once protected windows

hang at crazy angles

flapping dangerously

in a prairie wind

that rushes down from Canada to the Gulf

but fails to move windmills

which resist raising water

no longer needed

for families long since left

Dwellings built with pride

detailed with love

no longer filled with children’s chatter

slowly sink

into the prairie that was once a sea

waiting patiently

for the earth

to take them back

Irish Photographer Dave McKane

Hutch News 1920 - Pollard resident brought home

BRING BODY HOME OF

. A REAL KANSAS HERO

Edwin Anderson, Orderly to Captain

of Co. E, Gave His Life

in the Argonne.

. T h e r e m a i n s of a K a n s a s hero, Edwi n A. A n d e r s o n , w h o g a v e his l i f e In 

t h e Argonne a s a r e s u l t of t r y i n g to save his c a p t a i n , a r e b e i n g brought

home for b u r i a l.

A n d e r s o n w a s o r d e r l y t o Cspt. Ben S. Hudson, commanding Co. ID, 137th

Inf. In t h e A r g o n n e . When Capt. Hudson fell wounded on t h e field h i s orde r l y

h e l p e d r e s c u e him. H e w a s hims

e l f badly gassed, b u t s t a y e d w i t h t he

company until t h e r e g i m e n t was relieved.

He died a f e w _ d a y s later from

t h e - r e s u l t of t h e gaeslng.

H i s body 13 b e i n g brought home, a nd

t h e funeral will be held a t Lyons und

e r a u s p i c e s of t h e A m e r i c a n Legion

post t h e r e . His p a r e n t s Mr. a n d Mrs.

C h a r l e s Anderson, live a.t Nickerson.

a n d his wife, t o w h om h e w a s m a r r i ed

J u s t b e f o r e , ' g o i n g overseas, lives at

P o l l a r d , Rice county.

The d a t e of t h e funeral l i a s not been

set as yet, b u t a' n u m b e r of t h e membe r s of Company E In H u t c h i n s o n a re

p l a n n i n g ot a t t e n d.

Dec. 30, 1920

Saxman, a town in Rice County

Former Saxman church. Local man Dale Hoover has been restoring it.

Abandoned house

Inside the church

Saxman tracks went through here

Dale walks down the church steps

I've been meaning to post these photos from my trip to Saxman, a small hamlet in Rice County. Phil Mathews of Hutchinson stopped by a while back to show me the historical documents his mother left him, which included many photos of Saxman, along with documents detailing the history.

A few of nuggets:

Saxman as born in 1888 when the Frisco Railroad pushed through the area. It was named after the man who owned the quarter section of ground where the town site was platted. The first store was built by George DeWeese - "a tiny one-room affair with limited stock, but drew trade for a good many miles," according to a 1922 issue of the Lyons Republican.

Joe Bleger was one of the early promoters. He served as a Frisco agent for 19 years and was the postmaster for nearly as long. As a merchant, he helped start the first lumberyard and kept the elevator in operation.

There were church services, however. According to the Lyons Republican, the first worship service in Saxman was in the driveway of the elevator. Seats were improvised by laying bricks across nail kegs. The sermon, however, was so disturbed by rats "that the feminine contingent in the congregation spent as much of the time shooing at the rodents as they did listening to the sermon." Parishioners finally began meeting in Woodman Hall, which was a dance hall on Fridays and a church on Sundays. "Saints and sinners frequented the building without any detrimental results to either," The News reported in 1952. The United Presbyterian Church was built in 1906, according to the Lyons newspaper.

In 1907, the town's 35-piece band was invited to Hutchinson to play a concert for a future president, William Howard Taft, who was then Secretary of War under President Teddy Roosevelt. The Lyons article reported the town had the best band in their section of Kansas, attributing its founding to a grain buyer who was an old bandleader. The man wanted to develop a brass band for the town but there was no place to practice. He was able to secure the depot baggage room.

One of the biggest demises of the town came on July 1, 1952, when Mrs. Paul Dinsmore, the postmistress, stamped 350 envelopes for stamp collectors who wanted the Saxman postmark, then closed the doors of the old state bank building, which was serving as the post office, according to The News.

She moved away, too.

Saxman's old school is a bunch of junk and weeds.

Mitchell, Kansas, a Rice County ghost town

The Mitchell post office opened in 1882, according to the Kansas State Historical Society. At one time, there was a grocery store, a hardware store, a lumberyard, a coal bin and a depot. Houses dotted several blocks and Conner figures, at one time, 120 people lived in Mitchell during its heyday.
Early settlers included W.H. Rife, who first settled on Cow Creek in 1870. Even Conner's family homesteaded in the area, although Conner said he isn't sure how the town was named Mitchell. Mitchell had a doctor for a time, Flavius Smith, who started practicing there in 1889, according to the Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

Mitchell also got noted in a Chicago newspaper in January 1898 when Adolph Campbell, of Mitchell, "attempted to drown himself at the foot of Dock Street yesterday."
Mitchell did have a famous daughter. Actress Shirley Knight grew up in Mitchell, graduating from the eighth grade in 1950 with Conner, he said. She has starred in movies like "Endless Love," "As Good as It Gets" and "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."


Conner said he wasn't born yet when the bank was operating, although he had an uncle who worked as a teller there for a time. He doesn't recall the general store or the hardware store - they were all gone before he was born in 1936.
There was the elevator, however, he said. And, for a time, there was a train. He recalls his father riding the train doodlebug east to get a 1940s Farmall H tractor, then driving it home. The doodlebug also hauled cream and eggs to McPherson.

Farmer Delmer Conner took me on a tour on a January morning, pointing to a city block that is nothing but grass. The houses have burned, fallen down or were moved to a more prospering town, he said. A concrete bank vault still stands, the building around it having crumbled years ago. An old telephone building is hidden in the trees, just a shell of its former state.

The Methodist Church closed not long after the school, Conner said. He has the cornerstone, which says it was built in 1916. In the past year, a man had tried to renovate it, putting on a new roof, new doors and new windows. However, worked stopped a few months ago and Conner said he heard the building had been sold to someone else. 

Local farmer Delmer Conner sits at the school he once attended.

Mitchell School. It opened in 1926 and closed in the 1960s

Old elevator at Mitchell. It's now owned by a local farmer.

The old Methodist Church. It closed in the 1960s.

 Someone started to renovate the old church as a home and stopped.

The old telephone building, hidden in the trees

A merry-go-round stills stands at the school, not far from the ball diamond.

Bank vault.

The concrete vault is all that is left of the bank building.

Home where Hollywood Actress Shirley Knight once lived.

The church parsonage burned down, but the well still stands.